Chapter 8. Upgrading to Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization 1.6

Upgrading involves moving from one version of a product to a newer major release of the same product. This section shows you how to upgrade to Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization 1.6 from version 1.5.

From a component standpoint, this involves the following:

  • Upgrading the Hosted Engine virtual machine to Red Hat Virtualization Manager version 4.3.
  • Upgrading the physical hosts to Red Hat Virtualization 4.3.

8.1. Major changes in version 1.6

Be aware of the following differences between Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization 1.6 and previous versions:

Ansible-based deployment and management
RHHI for Virtualization now uses Ansible playbooks for all deployment and management tasks. Documentation has been updated accordingly.
Expand volumes across more than 3 nodes
Volumes can now span across 3, 6, 9, or 12 nodes. See Volume Types for support details. See Expanding an existing volume across more hyperconverged nodes for instructions on expanding existing volumes across more nodes.
RHHI for Virtualization sizing tool
Visit the RHHI for Virtualization Sizing Tool, enter your deployment requirements and click Solve to receive an example configuration with suggested nodes, memory, and resource commitments for your deployment.

8.2. Upgrade workflow

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization is a software solution comprised of several different components. Upgrade the components in the following order to minimize disruption to your deployment:

  1. Prepare the systems to be upgraded.
  2. Upgrade the Hosted Engine virtual machine.
  3. Upgrade the hyperconverged hosts.

8.3. Preparing to upgrade

8.3.1. Update to the latest version of the previous release

Ensure that you are using the latest version (4.2.8) of Red Hat Virtualization Manager 4.2 on the hosted engine virtual machine, and the latest version of Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 on the hosted engine node.

See the Red Hat Virtualization Self-Hosted Engine Guide for the Red Hat Virtualization 4.3 update process.

Important

Do not proceed with the following prerequisites until you have updated to the latest version of Red Hat Virtualization 4.2.

8.3.2. Update subscriptions

You can check which repositories a machine has access to by running the following command as the root user: 

# subscription-manager repos --list-enabled

  • Verify that the Hosted Engine virtual machine is subscribed to the following repositories:

    • rhel-7-server-rhv-4.3-manager-rpms
    • rhel-7-server-rhv-4-manager-tools-rpms
    • rhel-7-server-rpms
    • rhel-7-server-supplementary-rpms
    • jb-eap-7-for-rhel-7-server-rpms
    • rhel-7-server-ansible-2-rpms

  • Verify that the Hosted Engine virtual machine is not subscribed to previous versions of the required repositories.

    • rhel-7-server-rhv-4.3-manager-rpms replaces the rhel-7-server-rhv-4.2-manager-rpms repository

Subscribe a machine to a repository by running the following command on that machine: 

# subscription-manager repos --enable=<repository>

8.3.3. Verify that data is not currently being synchronized using geo-replication

  • Click the Tasks tab at the bottom right of the Manager. Ensure that there are no ongoing tasks related to Data Synchronization. If data synchronization tasks are present, wait until they are complete before beginning the update.

  • Stop all geo-replication sessions so that synchronization will not occur during the update. Click the Geo-replication subtab and select the session that you want to stop, then click Stop.

    Alternatively, run the following command to stop a geo-replication session: 

    # gluster volume geo-replication <MASTER_VOL> <SLAVE_HOST>::<SLAVE_VOL> stop

8.4. Upgrading Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization

8.4.1. Upgrading the Hosted Engine virtual machine

  1. Place the cluster into Global Maintenance mode

    1. Log in to the Web Console.
    2. Click Virtualization → Hosted Engine.
    3. Click Put this cluster into global maintenance.

  2. Upgrade Red Hat Virtualization Manager.

    1. Log in to the Hosted Engine virtual machine.

    2. Upgrade the setup packages: 

      # yum update ovirt*setup\*

    3. Run engine-setup and follow the prompts to upgrade the Manager.

      This process can take a while and cannot be aborted, so Red Hat recommends running it inside a screen session. See How to use the screen command for more information about this function.

    4. Upgrade all other packages. 

      # yum update

    5. Reboot the Hosted Engine virtual machine to ensure all updates are applied. 

      # reboot

  3. Restart the Hosted Engine virtual machine.

    1. Log in to any hyperconverged host.

    2. Start the Hosted Engine virtual machine. 

      # hosted-engine --vm-start

    3. Verify the status of the Hosted Engine virtual machine. 

      # hosted-engine --vm-status

  4. Remove the cluster from Global Maintenance mode.

    1. Log in to the Web Console.
    2. Click Virtualization → Hosted Engine.
    3. Click Remove this cluster from global maintenance.

8.4.2. Upgrading the hyperconverged hosts

Important

If you are upgrading a host from Red Hat Virtualization 4.2.7 or 4.2.7-1, ensure that the hosted engine virtual machine is not running on that host during the upgrade process. This is related to a bug introduced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6, BZ#1641798, which affects these versions of Red Hat Virtualization.

To work around this issue, stop the hosted engine virtual machine before upgrading a host, and start it on another host. 

[root@host1] # hosted-engine --vm-shutdown
[root@host2] # hosted-engine --vm-start

  1. Upgrade one host at a time

    Perform the following steps on one hyperconverged host at a time.

    1. Upgrade the hyperconverged host.

      1. In the Manager, click Compute → Hosts and select a node.
      2. Click Installation → Upgrade.

      3. Click OK to confirm the upgrade.

        Wait for the upgrade to complete, and for the host to become available again.

    2. Verify self-healing is complete before upgrading the next host.

      1. Click the name of the host.
      2. Click the Bricks tab.
      3. Verify that the Self-Heal Info column of all bricks is listed as OK before upgrading the next host.

  2. Update cluster compatibility

    When all hosts are upgraded, update cluster compatibility setting.

    1. In the Manager, click Cluster and select the cluster (Default).
    2. Click Edit.
    3. Update the value of Cluster compatibility to 4.3 and save.

    4. Restart all virtual machines

      This ensures that the new cluster compatibility setting takes effect.

      1. Click Compute → Virtual Machines and select a running virtual machine.
      2. Click Reboot.

      3. Click OK in the Reboot Virtual Machine(s) confirmation window.

        The Status of the virtual machine changes to Reboot In Progress before returning to Up.

Troubleshooting

  • If upgrading a hyperconverged host fails because of a conflict with the rhvm-appliance package, log in to the hyperconverged host and follow the steps in RHV: RHV-H Upgrade failed before continuing.